Climate change: Failure

News of more climate change failure from National this morning, first with Genesis Energy's announcement that they won't be closing Huntly and will instead be keeping it open for another four years. Huntly is our dirtiest generator; it burns coal, FFS - the worst possible fuel for the environment. Shutting it down would remove 5% of our emissions overnight! But instead, generator nervousness (brought on by their inability to invest in clean options due to prolonged uncertainty over Tiwai Point) has won the day, so we will get dirty power instead of clean. Its a perfect example of how National's ETS - which should have priced coal and Huntly out of the market long ago - has utterly failed.

Speaking of the ETS, it also appears that New Zealand Steel rorted it for profits, taking free units in excess of its actual emissions, but paying in fraudulent Ukrainian and Russian "credit" they'd bought for next to nothing. As a result, they appear to have scammed us for over $4 million. Its certainly an incentive, but probably not one for the emissions cuts National was hoping for. Instead of "polluter pays", we have "pay polluters", while the planet burns.